Neil Gaiman

Sunday, September 29, 2002

M. John Harrison's LIGHT is a remarkable book -- easily my favourite SF novel in the last decade, maybe longer -- and the image that remains in my head after the book was done is that of light as foam, like the sea foam "between the water and the dry land". Very appropriate for a book that exists in the spaces between things (including genre and other people). It'll win awards, and it'll puzzle a lot of people, especially those who will be able to read the present-day stuff (as mainstream fiction, or as borderline horror) but unable to read (in the way that Samuel R Delany talks about reading SF as something literal -- 'her world exploded" means something different in SF, after all) the future SF sections. Very lovely.